Economy

As with many emerging markets, small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) make up a large proportion of South Africa’s private sector. According to the government’s economic blueprint, the National Development Plan, 90% of planned new jobs will be created by SMEs by 2030. To enable this, the government has rolled out a new department charged with aiding SME activity, the...

Africa’s second-biggest economy and by far its most globally integrated in terms of capital and trade flows, South Africa has had to navigate challenging waters in recent years. The economy has come a long way since apartheid ended 20 years ago, with significant improvements in both productivity and capacity – and a GDP that is now 2.5 times larger – but domestic and exogenous...

The South African economy grappled with headwinds in early 2014, although it did avoid a recession in the second quarter of the year. The country’s long-term fundamentals remain fairly attractive, but the new cabinet still faced a tricky job of stimulating growth over the remainder of the year. The economy grew 0.6% in the second quarter of 2014, after shrinking by an...